Tatara
by The Conductor
Summary: Led by a kodama, San and Ashitaka discover something remarkable in the ruin of the old forge . . . for good or evil, they cannot say. CONCLUSION NOW UP! Reviews are much appreciated!
1. The Ruin

It was once silent when night fell on the forest. It could only be silent. When the sky glowed a deep indigo blue, when the trees were still, when the pools faded to blackness - that was when anything other than silence was blasphemous.  
  
It was silent no longer. Human chatter and laughter wafted on the wind - garish, grating noise. Oxen lowed in a deep, stupid chorus. Sometimes the watchmen chimed a false alarm, banging bits of iron together with a sound that made a being's spirit shrivel. But the whole cacophony was underpinned by the relentless rumble of the forge, a place where fire ruled and metal was made to glow and melt.  
  
Tiny, iridescent insects scattered and chirped when something came up a path, pale and white in the moonlight. A new sound bounced around the forest - a bony rattle. Whatever was on the path faded into the night, then appeared again - a little, round, wide-eyed body scampering deftly over fallen logs and weathered rocks. It stopped and turned, rattling its head like an instrument.  
  
Something new came silently up the path, something like an eerie dream vision of a wolf. Its white fur moved fluidly in the wind, but this creature walked upright in a way almost human.  
  
The round-bodied sprite walked on with its short, rapid gait as if it were leading the wolflike apparition. It stopped before a ruin, a giant, sagging wooden building half-consumed by long grasses and spreading green moss. Trees extended their branches covetously over the roof, as if reclaiming their own, and moonlight shone through the rotted shingles and walls.  
  
The wolf-creature paused and looked up. The head fell back to reveal a face positively human, a young face with eyes that glimmered with vitality. Her short brown hair rippled in the wind like the wolf-fur, and three angry, blood-colored triangles stood out on her skin - one atop her forehead, the others down her cheeks - like war paint.  
  
She looked into the building, then back down at the little creature just in time to see it fade away, its round eyes mournful. Sniffing the air, she caught the tinge of sweat and iron on it. It came from the west, where sparks and firelit smoke squatted over the trees. Her eyes narrowed with contempt - that forge was a place for humans.  
  
The building she stood next to had once been a place for humans too, but not anymore. The old forge inside it sat neglected and misshapen, a squat, benign black hulk. Weeds and grasses grew where the fires once raged. Humans no longer had any place here; only the spirits did.  
  
But she saw no spirits here. The little round tree spirit that led her there had vanished, and no others came. Field mice did not play in the grass beneath this roof and birds did not nest in the beams. She paused. It wasn't wise for her to go where the animals would not.  
  
Another wisp of human chatter drifted in on the wind. The new town was not far, and she knew Ashitaka would be coming, perhaps soon. Her feet made no noise as she slipped in the vast entrance.  
  
Her vision was sharp, but it was too dark to see inside. She used her nose, picking her way through the discarded stones and tools tangled in the weeds. Mostly she smelled the forest - wet bark, soft green leaves, dry grass.  
  
Something else caught her notice - dust, then the scent of iron - iron and sweat and burning wood, the smell of the forge. She found it stronger than ever when she came into the forge's shadow. It was cold there, and she pulled the wolfskin tight, her bones quivering.  
  
A face sprang out of the gloom, pale, wide-eyed and openmouthed, the face of a very young girl lying in the ashes where nothing grew. The eyes blinked - it was living - and a chance shaft of moonlight shone along the white arm extended toward the visitor with pleading fingers. 


	2. The Departure

Irontown was a village unlike any other, one that disregarded whether it was day or night. The sentries in the watchtowers had eyes so well-trained that they could keep watch by moonlight, looking across the fields and forests to see the other villages that grew rice and raised oxen - for Irontown.  
  
Lamps and fires spread their flickering orange light, and for the half of Irontown that worked the night shift, this was the only sun they would know for months. Unabashed, the men traded bawdy jokes and men's gossip in that lurid light, resting between their usual manly tasks as soldiers, ox- drivers or heavy laborers.  
  
The women, however, had a unique position: pumping the immense wooden bellows that made the forge glow white-hot in the night, and made the air of Irontown hang heavy with the smells of charcoal and hot iron. They had come from brothels, from exiles, from all places that had no use for them, and here they were the lifeblood of this sleepless village.  
  
The men griped that Lady Eboshi spoiled the women shamelessly, but Ashitaka thought something different. He'd been with this Irontown since they'd rebuilt it not so long ago, and he listened to the forge's deep, fiery rumble, the wheezes and exhausts of the bellows, the clanking of new iron bars, the chatter and sighs of the women. Sometimes all the sounds blended and he could swear he was hearing a song - the song of the women of the forge, a song that would be sung for ages hence.  
  
Ashitaka hated walking to the main gate; even the few that had not yet met him turned their heads when he went by. Nearly everyone in the village was a mongrel in terms of lineage, but he was of pure royal Emishi blood, and there was no mistaking his luminous brown eyes or sharp jaw. Most were surprised at his youth; he probably wasn't even twenty yet. The onlookers kept watching him after he'd passed by; so this was the young man who, rumor claimed, had defeated a demon's curse and saved Irontown's people from a god of death.  
  
"Ashitaka!" He stopped when a woman came out of the forge, waving to him. She was a few years older than himself and clad in a commonsensical red kimono with her hair tied up completely beneath a kerchief. "Where are you off to, then?"  
  
He spoke quietly: "Good evening, Toki."  
  
"Out with it, you're going to see the wolf-girl." She wore a smug grin, reveling in the power of idle talk. "You'll have to bring her here sometime. She's making all the girls jealous. You'll break their hearts if you keep doing this."  
  
"I hear Lady Eboshi brought back some more workers. How are they doing?"  
  
Toki sniffed at the level answer that told her he wasn't letting on. "The usual problems. Either they're terrified of the forge or they think it's a toy. It's just new to them."  
  
"Good luck. I'll be back by nightfall tomorrow."  
  
"Oh, take your time. Take a week if you want to." On this note, several girls who'd been eavesdropping from the forge entrance started giggling. "Good night, Toki," Ashitaka replied, walking away with a warrior's grace and gravity amidst the feverish village crowd. He heard Toki shout good- naturedly "Back to work, you layabouts!" followed by a cluster of female chatter.  
  
The guards at the gate that night were new, a pair of hulking men who were baffled by the sight of Ashitaka's mount Yakkul - the creature seemed to be part yak and part antelope. They crossed their bulky iron hand cannons and pestered him with questions - who was he, what did he do in Irontown, what was that beast, and so on. He couldn't leave until the captain of the guard intervened, a towering, blustery figure named Gonza who thundered "Quit giving this boy trouble, you hear! He can tear you limb from limb if you give him any reason! And your weapons won't stop him! Not for a minute!"  
  
The captain was so busy shouting he barely noticed when the lad said "Thank you," leaped atop Yakkul and vanished into the darkened woods. It was done so swiftly that Gonza took a moment to look around before turning back on the guards: "Back to your posts! And watch carefully! Strange things come out of the forest after dark!" 


	3. The Successor

Yakkul galloped over the trail as Ashitaka left the course to him and gazed around at the towering trees that whisked by. This forest had given rise to the demon that cursed him, the spirit who lifted that curse, and to a white wolf god of great wisdom and great foolishness. All of them were gone now, but so much was still here. Sometimes he let himself wonder if there was a place for humans here, someplace here where he could live.  
  
But not this night. Normally the kodamas, the little tree spirits, greeted him with a rattling of their heads. Tonight the trees sat silent - dark, still shapes that loomed overhead.  
  
He was riding through the remains of the old Irontown now, not abandoned long but long enough that usually the kodamas would wander in and out of crumbling huts and watch him from moss-covered roof beams. Tonight they were nowhere to be seen, and the fallen watchtower lay with its columns splayed every which-way, like the limbs of a crushed insect. There seemed to be no life in this ghost town - nothing, as the monk Jigo had put it, but angry ghosts all around us.  
  
Suddenly, Yakkul reared up and Ashitaka gave a shout of confusion - "Yakkul! Easy, boy! Easy! What's the matter?" He clung to the bridle but the red elk kept bucking away from the path, ignoring his master's pleas. Ashitaka let go of the reins and was flung into the air.  
  
He landed hard on the path, bruised but not defeated, and saw Yakkul gallop a short distance to a nearby river, still bristling.  
  
"What's got into you?" Ashitaka demanded, betrayed and bewildered. The animal paced a bit, then snorted and looked back silently.  
  
Ashitaka turned. That was the ruin of the old forge behind him. Without thinking, he clutched his right arm - he'd never seen any kodamas in there at all. Even Yakkul was afraid. "Yakkul! Come here, boy! We've leaving! If you won't stay, neither will I!"  
  
He was halfway to Yakkul when he stopped, frightened. He'd heard a voice - with his name on it. There it was again - his name, called out like something between a greeting and a cry for help - and he knew that voice.  
  
"San!" he shouted back. "Is that you?" He ran up to the black, yawning entrance to the old forge. It couldn't be safe for humans to go in there.  
  
The voice again - clearer, definitely San's. She was somewhere in that forge, hidden in the murk. "San! I'm here!" he called back to the darkness. "I'm coming!"  
  
He found his way from the entrance with small steps, tensed in case he ran into something truly dangerous. Rough iron sands were piled beneath his feet, and the dead, half-melted forge seemed to breathe a cold wind down the back of his neck.  
  
It was cold here, almost frigid - it couldn't be this cold, not at this time of the year. He stumbled over the wreck of the bellows in its pit, then found a place where moonlight fell in still blue patches. Huddled under the forge's monstrous shape was a shimmering, flowing blanket of wolf fur, white and spectral. "San - what's happened? Are you hurt?"  
  
Her eyes suddenly appeared out of the darkness - she wasn't on the floor beneath the wolfskin, she was kneeling there, shivering in her simple fur tunic and skirt. "Here," he offered, starting to take off his kimono, "take this."  
  
Her answer was simple and gentle: "Keep that off me, I don't want to go back smelling like a human." He stopped, surprised. San used to say things like that in anger, outraged at the thought of wearing a filthy human garment. Looking straight at her, he spoke again. "What are you doing here? I thought you were meeting me in Moro's valley, at dawn."  
  
"A kodama led me here."  
  
"A kodama! So they are still around here. I haven't seen any tonight."  
  
"I've been waiting for you, Ashitaka. I wanted you to see her."  
  
"See who?"  
  
San answered by pulling back the wolfskin partway, and cradled in her lap was a face that struck him to the core: a girl, no older than six or seven, emaciated and hollow-eyed. Her skin was pale, paler than a corpse's - she could almost have been the ghost of one of the villagers he'd had to bury.  
  
Cautiously, he put his hand out. When San nodded, he felt the girl's forehead. Cold as stone. "Is she alive?"  
  
The wolf-girl was speaking through chattering teeth now. "She's alive. She'll stay alive."  
  
The girl's eyes sprang open, wide and black, almost springing from their sockets. Leaning closer, San murmured some soothing words and the eyes closed again. Ashitaka felt an impulse well up to jerk his hand away in horror. Instead, he kept it there, feeling his warmth bleed into the half- starved girl. "What happened to her?"  
  
Now San spoke with anger. "Abandoned. By the humans! The people under that gun-woman."  
  
Ashitaka slowly turned his head. "San . . . there have never been any children in Irontown. Not now, not then."  
  
She pretended she didn't hear. "I'm taking her with me. She'll be a daughter of the wolf clan - Moro made me her daughter, I can make her mine. The next Princess Mononoke." There was something in her voice that was indescribably sad - something full of pride and genuine caring that made Ashitaka's heart pause. She went on: "Help me bring her up. I can't do it alone, and my brothers would be useless. Will you help me, Ashitaka."  
  
The girl's eyes opened again, and this time the Emishi warrior pulled his hand back. He felt almost sick about what he had to say: "San, you can't." She answered by leaning consolingly over the girl again. "San - look at her eyes!"  
  
She did - and gasped. There was fire in those eyes - smoldering red coals of hate. "She's not human!" Ashitaka cried. "She is a mononoke!"  
  
The girl's skin turned elastic - her face distorted - she bulged and grew into something bloated, black, horrific. San scrambled away and sprang up, one hand on the knife she had made from a wolf's fang.  
  
The whole forge baked beneath a flood of lurid orange light - the air shimmered, even though it was still freezing - and the smell - the smell made them stagger, made them nauseous - the overpowering stench of something burning. Tall grass shriveled and died - roof beams turned to charcoal.  
  
Ashitaka gave a yell and ripped his scabbard off - his sword was glowing red. It fell among the weeds, smoking, then rose into the air on its own. The monstrous apparition rumbled a noise that sounded like joy and the sword was raised for a slash.  
  
A female shout - San's battle-cry - rattled Ashitaka's nerve. The sword swung and the wolf princess jumped forward to strike back.  
  
Sparks exploded and San's scream made him cringe. She crumpled against the fragile wooden wall and her knife clattered to the ground, scorched. The bloated thing with the fearsome eyes raised the sword.  
  
Ashitaka leapt between them. "Calm yourself!" he pleaded. "Calm yourself and move your sword closer!" He held one small object in his hand, upraised as if to defend them.  
  
A single dry twig. 


	4. The End

The monster stayed its hand, staring down in disbelief at this puny human. Ashitaka leaned forward cautiously, reaching up with the twig. "Calm yourself. I'm not going to hurt you. I can't hurt you, see?"  
  
Gently, he touched the twig to the red-hot sword. The wood smoked, flickered, then caught, and he tossed it into the air. The mononoke watched as the twig sailed over the rim of the forge in a tall, fiery arc and clattered into the dry charcoal at the bottom.  
  
A warm glow slowly shone out from the wreckage - the last bits of fuel were burning and the forge had returned to a ghost of its former glory. The orange light faded as the creature shrank and re-formed, dropping the sword into the ash-pit.  
  
"Wake up! San, wake up!" Ashitaka shook her by the shoulders. She barely stirred. Throwing the wolf-pelt over her, he picked her up and ran for the door.  
  
Outside it was quiet again - cool and blue in the moonlight, with the sound of the new forge just a whisper in the wind. Reaching the path, he turned and saw a hollow-eyed young girl standing mournfully in the door, the building now just another darkened ruin.  
  
Kneeling, he laid San down on the grass and moss and pointed to the smoke drifting over the treetops. "Go there!" he called to the girl. "It's the only home you can have now." San's eyes opened to see the sad figure fade back into the gloom.  
  
"What was she?" the wolf-girl hissed as she sat up, never taking her eyes off the ruin. Ashitaka put a hand on her shoulder before answering "She was the spirit of the forge."  
  
"Spirit . . . of the forge?"  
  
"Why not? When water first flowed over rocks, there was a river spirit. When humans built the forge, they created her."  
  
"And then left her to die with the old Irontown."  
  
"Left her homeless. And they left her their hatred of the wolves."  
  
With a growl that was almost wolflike, San stood up, stumbling a bit before finding her footing. She reached for where she wore her knife; when it wasn't there, she clenched her hand into a fist. "I should've cut her throat - that was my instinct, to just kill her right there!" Pulling the wolf-fur over her back, she set out toward the forest, walking with fury in every step. "San!" Ashitaka called.  
  
She turned to see him walking behind her, his eyes gentle, maybe even smiling. Yakkul followed, peering curiously over his master's shoulder. "I would have helped you," Ashitaka promised. "If she'd been human, I would have helped."  
  
For a moment, San did nothing, and he read in her face a sadness she didn't dare let on about. Then she broke into a run and vanished over a rise in the path. Dawn was starting to break, and a luminous, pale blue band was spreading across the horizon. "Come on, boy." Ashitaka beckoned to his mount and they both galloped after her.  
  
Back in the ruins, a single kodama cautiously stood at the entrance to the wrecked forge. After looking around, it rattled its head and stepped fearlessly into the grass and sprouts that grew inside.  
  
THE END 


End file.
